Students held for fraud

OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

Two engineering students were arrested on Sunday following a complaint by an excise official that a consultancy had duped him of Rs 3.2 lakh by “promising” to get his daughter admitted to a private engineering college.

Rahul Raj and Tapas Mandal were picked up from in front of Rabindra Sadan, where they had turned up to collect money from the official. “We are looking for the mastermind, Amit Chowdhury and Ranvijay Singh, who run the Gurusaday Dutta Road consultancy,” said D.P. Singh, deputy commissioner, south.

Kanak Bhowmik, the excise official, had lodged the complaint with Park Street police station last week. “I came to know about the agency from the Internet. When I approached the agency, Chowdhury and Singh told me that my daughter would be admitted to a management quota seat in a particular college if I paid them Rs 3.2 lakh,” Bhowmik has mentioned in the FIR.

State JEE board chairman Bhaskar Gupta told Metro that consultancies could not have any role in getting students admitted to management quota seats.

Bhowmik paid the money through a cheque. A couple of weeks later, Chowdhury and Singh demanded another Rs 6 lakh. “When I inquired with the college, the authorities told me that they had received only Rs 2 lakh for my daughter’s admission,” said Bhowmik.

“We decided to lay a trap for the agency owners,” said Singh. Accordingly, Bhowmik told them that he was ready to pay the additional amount. “They asked him to come in front of Rabindra Sadan with the money. Two youths (Rahul and Tapas) showed up and told Bhowmik that they had been sent to collect the money. Plainclothesmen waiting nearby arrested them,” said an officer.